Gratuitous Slave Imagery, Hobbit-Troll-Vampires & Team Jesus: Roundtable for True Blood S03E05
Hosted by Thea Lim, featuring Tami Winfrey Harris, Joseph Lamour and Andrea Plaid
The cable gods stopped Latoya from joining us this week, but she promises to rant from the comments section.
Thea: Praise be that this episode was plot heavy, and not as violence-against-women heavy as last episode. I have to say this is the first episode I have enjoyed in a while. Damn you True Blood, for having that once in a while alluring episode that keeps me viewing through the shlock!
Ok, but obviously first things first: dear lord, whose idea was it to have the black woman fleeing a white Southern mansion in a Sojourner Truth outfit then get mauled by a dog (ok it was a werewolf, but it looked like a dog)? Do we buy that that was not a slavery reference – could the writers really be that culturally tone deaf (to their own damn culture!) to not see the significance of that image? And if they did see the significance of that image, why on earth drop it casually into an episode (and show) that has nothing to do with American slavery?
Joe: Ah Thea, you forget, southern black woman running away from an opulent mansion, hungry, barefoot AND bound with rope. Oh yeah, and being chased by animals.
Thea: Ugh.
Andrea: And I thought for two seconds that Cooter was going to rape her once he pushed her on the grass. Just. Too. Much.
Joe: Two of my white friends, (one who’s southern by the way) both said to me after the episode “When we saw Tara ‘running for freedom’, we basically did a double take.” Surely Rutina Wesley must of said something. Right? The writers absolutely have to know what that looks like.
Tami: Could be because I’m currently reading Wench, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, about enslaved black women forced into relationships with their southern slave masters, but that was some seriously loaded imagery. I can’t imagine the director and editors of this episode didn’t see what was clear to nearly every commenter in cyberspace.
Andrea: It’s like what Mollena said about the Ciara/Justin Timberlake interracial BDSM-y video, that moment, IMO, was a cheat precisely because the writers knew the imagery was loaded.
Tami: Also disturbing was the naked disdain everyone at Chez Edgington had for Tara. I understand that vampires view humans as insignificant, but what was up with that “dusky little blood beast” stuff from Talbot? Again, contrast this treatment to the way Sookie moves in the vamp domain. Yes, she has sometimes been ignored and condescended to, but never spoken to like a dog. “Who’s a pretty girl?”
Andrea: Tami, I wanted to knee-kick Talbot in the chin for mock-cooing at Tara like that. And saying that while Tara was getting tied up by her abuser did not sit well with me at all. But I’m going to give Tara props for the deadly side-eye she gives to Talbot while he came at her like that. I think, if Franklin wasn’t tying her up, Tara would’ve delivered a knee-kick herself, vampire strength or not.
What capped off the residents’/guests’ contempt for me was the double throat-chop of Bill flat-out rejecting to help Tara when she needed him (yes, I know he couldn’t do anything because he had to continue his increasingly complicated ploy with Russell et. al., but he dropped that rather conveniently when he heard ol’ Sookie might have been sexing up Alcide) and Lorena’s white-lady-of-the-manor-tinged comment of “Nobody wants her.” After the fact that she (and Bill and Russell) just finished killing an “ethnic” sex worker. In front of the vampire who (abusively) feels the exact opposite (ostenibly) about Tara. Why didn’t Franklin get up in her face the way he got up in Talbot’s? I really want to see Sookie’s reaction when Tara tells her what Bill did to her….though I think it probably wouldn’t matter to Sookie.
Thea: I’m actually really confused at this point as to what exactly Bill’s complicated ploy is. He is pretending to be on Russell’s side and disavow Sophie Anne and break up with Sookie because…?
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